Awakening His Duchess by Katy Madison

“Don’t be against me in this. It is bad enough I shall have to fight my
father.”
    How could he fight his father when he had promised God to be
a dutiful son and make the duke proud if he got out of that mud-filled grave?
    “I only know what I saw.”
    Beau didn’t ask what Mazi had seen. Yvette could fool
people. She’d fooled him as a young man. She’d obviously fooled his father. The
last thing he needed was her fooling his friend. But Mazi was going to tell him
anyway.
    Mazi steepled his index fingers and tapped them against his
lips. “Your wife was afraid of me, but she was more afraid for you when you
started to fall.”
     

Chapter Six
    The bedchambers had no doors. Yvette jolted to a stop in the
middle of the massive private sitting room, staring at the archways leading to
the two sleeping chambers of the second suite. The sitting room was a
completely interior room. Doors would have blocked the light from the
bedchambers’ windows, but that rationale didn’t make Yvette like the open archways
any more.
    She wouldn’t be able to lock and barricade her door. The
last thing she wanted was Beau thinking she was available to him.
    “Your chamber is on the left, my lady,” said her maid, scooting
by with the basket of toiletries. “His lordship’s is to the right.”
    Perhaps she and Beau could manage to avoid each other—the
suite was spacious. But if not...
    She’d rather he didn’t realize she was here. Her bed wasn’t
visible from the sitting room. Although light from a burning lamp or fire in
the fireplace would be immediately obvious to anyone entering the room. Perhaps
if she was in bed with her lamp blown out, he wouldn’t know she was in here.
    “I shall not require a fire,” she said to a maid who’d just
entered with a bundle of firewood.
    “Yes, my lady.” The maid bobbed a curtsy and detoured to the
other bedchamber.
    She didn’t want another confrontation with him tonight. In
the morning she would have to face him and that would be soon enough.
    Yvette’s chest squeezed. How could she hide when he would be
sleeping just a few feet away? She crossed to her bedchamber and cautiously
stepped inside.
    The tent bed was big enough for two, unlike her own in the
room she’d taken near Etienne’s on the nursery floor. As a widow twice over
there was no need for her to have a large bed.
    “The dressing room is just through here.” Her maid walked
through the primrose yellow and pale green room. “I’ll put your things in
there.”
    “Did you bring my medical case?”
    Her maid cast her a sharp glance. “I’ll bring it next.”
    Yvette drew in a slow breath. Having the case near made her
feel more in control or perhaps better prepared to flee.
      “Is there a second
entrance through the dressing room?” asked Yvette. One could hope.
    “No, ma’am. Seeing as this set of rooms is the end of the
wing, there’s only the one door into the main passageway.”
    Yvette peeked into the long narrow dressing room with two
windows that ended in a flat wall. No doubt to create servants’ entrances they
would have had to cut into bedrooms on either side of the passageway, but it
did explain why the sitting room had no outside walls.
    Under other circumstances she might have appreciated the
completely private nest the layout afforded, but all she could think was there
was only one means of escape, short of going out a window thirty feet above the
ground.
    The maid plopped bottles on the dressing table causing
Yvette to jump with every clink. “I’ll just remove the rest of Lady Arrington’s
clothes.”
    The décor reminded Yvette of her sister-by-law who would
return home to find her place usurped. Lady Arrington already thought Yvette an
interloper, now she was taking her room. “Save it until the morning.”
    Yvette
wanted to be in bed long before Beau arrived. “By chance does she have a riding
habit that I might borrow?”
    “Would you like to borrow one of her nightrails?”